Email the author: Charles "Myrkul" Kendrick (myrkul@myrkul.org)
The Near-Death Experience:
Are We God?
"From my position near the ceiling, I watched as they began to wrap both my legs from tips of the
toes up to my hips, then my arms and hands up to the shoulders. This was to keep what blood remained for
my heart and lungs. Then they tilted my body so my legs were up in the air and I was standing on my head!
I was furious about the way they had handled Jeff's birth and now they were running around like
chickens with their heads cut off squawking loudly; and here I was looking at that silent, bandaged body
lying on a tilt table, head to the floor, legs and feet in the air...
...Their statements "We're losing her! We're losing her!" frightened me and I'd get pissed all over
again.
The scene changed and I was no longer in that room. I found myself in a place of such beauty and
peace. It was timeless and spaceless. I was aware of delicate and shifting hues of colors with their
accompanying rainbows of "sound", though there was no noise in this sound. It might have felt like wind
and bells, were it earthly. I "hung" there - floating. Then I became aware of other loving, caring beings
hovering near me. Their presence was so welcoming and nurturing. They appeared "formless" in the way I
was accustomed by now to seeing things. I don't know how to describe them. I was aware of some bearded
male figures in white robes in a semicircle around me. The atmosphere became blended as though made of
translucent clouds. I watched as these clouds and their delicate shifting colors moved through and around
us.
A dialogue softly started with answers to my unfinished questions almost before I could form them.
They said they were my guides and helpers as well as being God's messengers. Even though they were
assigned to me as a human - and always available to me - they had other purposes, too. They were in charge
of other realms in creation and had the capacity of being in several places simultaneously. They were also
"in charge" of several different levels of knowledge. I became aware of an ecstasy and a joy that permeated
the whole, unfolding beyond anything that I had experienced in my living twenty-five years, up to that point.
Even having my two previous children, whom I wanted very much, couldn't touch the "glow" of this special
experience.
Then I was aware of an Immense Presence coming toward me, bathed in white, shimmering light
that glowed and at times sparkled with diamonds. Everything else seen, the colors, beings, faded into the
distance as the Light Being permeated everything. I was being addressed by an overwhelming presence.
Even though I felt unworthy, I was being lifted into that which I could embrace. The Joy and Ecstasy were
intoxicating. It was "explained" that I could remain there if I wanted; it was a choice I could make. There
was much teaching going on, and I was just "there" silently, quietly. I felt myself expanding and becoming
part of All That Was in Total Freedom Unconditionally. I became aware again that I needed to make a
choice. Part of me wanted to remain forever, but I finally realized I didn't want to leave a new baby
motherless. I left with sadness and reluctance.
Almost instantly I felt reentry into my body through the silver cord at the top of my head. There
was something akin to a physical bump. As soon as I entered, I heard someone near me say, "Oh, we've got
her back." I was told I had had two pieces of placenta as large as grapefruits removed. (Atwater, 1994,
pp.52-54)
Obviously this woman has had a profound experience, but it is equally obvious that it is simply one
person's extremely involved hallucination. In fact, parts of it may be totally fabricated and embellished after
the fact. No one should be taking this as true, or using it to draw conclusions about the universe, whether
God exists, or the afterlife.
Or should they?
Under what circumstances might something like the above, something so easily classed as a
hallucination by modern science, be taken seriously?
Perhaps when 8 million people report the same or similar experiences?
The above is a typical example of what Raymond Moody, MD., dubbed a near-death experience (
NDE henceforth ). NDEs have been found to happen to a large percentage of people who are deemed
clinically dead and then revived. In one study done by Melvin Morse, MD., 8 of 12 randomly selected
cardiac arrest patients had an NDE (Morse, 1990, p.23). Most figures, and the figure suggested by a Gallup
Poll of adult Americans, land in the 35-40% range. With the number of heart attack victims being saved
these days by epinephrine injection and electroshock pads, 35% is enough to add up to eight million
Americans who have had NDEs, without counting children (Ring, 1984 p.35).
What exactly qualifies an experience as an NDE? If we are classing all strange visions seen during
death as NDEs, aren't we basically counting up hallucinations? Surprisingly no; there is a specific pattern to
seemingly every experience that happens during clinical "death". The most recognized class of NDEs
follows a specific nine stage pattern, where virtually all patients experience one or more of the following
stages:
1) A sense of being dead: the sudden awareness that one has had a
"fatal" accident or not survived an operation.
2) Peace and painlessness: a feeling that the ties that bind one to
the world have been cut.
3) An out-of-body experience: the sensation of peering down on one's
body and perhaps seeing the doctors and nurses trying to resuscitate.
4) Tunnel experience: the sense of moving up or through a narrow
passageway. [ or in some cases moving into an enclosure, or through a portal ]
5) People of Light: being met at the end of the tunnel by others who
are "glowing."
6) A Being of Light: the presence of a God-like figure or a force of
some kind. [ often a Jesus-like secondary figure is met first or accompanies the being of light ]
7) Life review: being shown one's life by the Being of Light. [ not always by the being of light ]
8) Reluctance to return: the feeling of being comfortable and
surrounded by the Light, of described as "pure love."
9) Personality transformation: a psychological change involving loss
of the fear of death, greater spiritualism, a sense of "connectedness"
with the Earth, and greater zest for life. (Mauro, 1992)
Every NDE researcher seems to agree with this pattern, although a few have between 7 and 10
stages listed, the difference in number accounted for by splitting or combining of the same events listed
above. One researcher, P.M.H. Atwater, herself a three time NDEr, dissents. We'll return to her theory
later.
What other immediate notions would force us to dismiss the NDE phenomenon altogether?
Perhaps the fact that they appear to be a recent fad, something that has only appeared in the last 15 years,
whereas the truths and the heaven they describe are clearly to be taken as eternal? A look at history tells us
this is not so. In the sixth century Pope Gregory the Great collected tales of NDEs as proof of the existence
of God (Morse, 1990 p.9). In the New Testament (2 Cor. 12:1-4), Paul describes an experience that
perfectly matches the NDE pattern (Morse, 1990). Harvard theologian Carol Zaleski finds evidence of near-
death experiences in Greek, Roman, Egyptian and Near Eastern myths and legends (Morse, 1990). More
obvious to the layman are images of glowing angels, journeys through tunnels, and beautiful points of light
being depicted in art from every culture (Atwater,1994). However, the connection between art, religion and
NDEs may well be chicken and egg: did religion create the NDE phenomena, or did NDEs create religion?
The trick answer to the chicken and egg question, that the dinosaur came first, may well be appropriate here.
Perhaps NDEs and religion evolved together, feeding off each other? We will return to this question later as
well. Suffice to say that, based on the examples above and on others, it is clear that the NDE phenomena
dates back to the earliest written records. The explanation for its sudden emergence is also clear: not only
are more people being saved from the brink of death by modern medicine ( as mentioned earlier ), but there
is now a global environment in which to share tales of NDEs, and thus note the amazing similarities.
Another reason to doubt the validity of NDEs would be if they could be reproduced by
hallucinogens or were experienced by patients who are not actually near death. Dr. Melvin Morse has spent
a great deal of time trying to prove that NDEs only occur in patients that are actually near death, not just in
danger of dying. As proof of this, he presents a study he did of 121 children exposed to the trauma of the
intensive care unit but never actually in danger of dying (Morse,1990). Of the 121, 118 had no memory of
their stay in the ICU at all (Morse,1990). The other three reported things they heard nurses say, and one
reported a dream of being attacked by monsters in white coats (Morse,1990). Nothing mentioned matched
the NDE pattern. However, of twelve randomly selected cardiac arrest patients, eight reported NDEs
(Morse,1990). Morse takes this as proof that one must actually by near death to have an NDE.
Other researchers disagree, citing cases of absolutely typical NDEs happening to people who, for
instance, faced what they thought was certain death. In Beyond the Light, Atwater relates the story of
Julian A. Milkes:
" ...I pulled over to the right side of the road ( it was not a major highway ), parked the car, and went down
a small incline to get off the road to pick the flowers. While I was picking the flowers, a car came whizzing
by and suddenly headed straight for me.
As I looked up and saw what I presumed would be an inevitable death, I separated from my body
and viewed what was happening from another perspective. My whole life flashed in front of me, from that
moment backwards to segments of my life. The review was not like a judgment" (Atwater,1994, pp.15-16)
From this and other trademark NDEs, Atwater concludes:
"I have observed that the terror of an ultimate end, the kind of terror that sees no hope, is sometimes enough
to shift people into a near-death mode. Illness, injury, or body trauma is not necessary."(Atwater, 1994,
p.16)
This conclusion seems to me more valid than Morse's conclusion, considering that Morse used as his control
the group of people who were not actually near death who Morse thought would be most likely to have an
NDE. By way of comparison Atwater's control group is the whole of the human race, or at least those who
were willing to talk to her.
Kenneth Ring, author of Heading Toward Omega: In Search of the Meaning of the Near Death
Experience and founder of the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS), agrees with
Atwater:
"Are there more people who have also undergone ND-like experiences and their aftereffects without
themselves having experienced a near-death crisis?
Of course there are - lots of them. Even in our own IANDS archives, we have more than a
hundred letters from people who have written to us to the effect, 'Well, I was never actually close to death,
but I also seem to have had what you call a near-death experience...'"(Ring, 1984 pp.225-226)
These one hundred letters represent those who had ND-like experiences, recognized them as similar to what
researchers call NDEs, had heard of IANDS, and felt that IANDS should know about their experience
despite the fact that its name included the phrase "near-death". It seems reasonable to suppose that these
one hundred correspondents represent a group of perhaps thousands of people who have had NDEs without
being near death, a group large enough that we can seriously consider their collective story just as we can
consider the story of the 8 million 'true' NDErs.
Morse has still proven something with his skewed sample however, despite the fact that it is clear
NDEs can happen without a person being near death. Virtually all of the patients Morse surveyed in the
ICU were on heavy medication, lending credence to the idea that drugs cannot cause an NDE (Morse,1990).
Ring, Atwater, and Morse all agree that drugs - even psychedelic drugs - do not produce NDEs and are not
the cause of NDEs(Atwater,1994)(Ring,1984)(Morse,1990). Atwater in particular points out that while
some drugs, like Lysergic Acid (LSD), can occasionally produce a feeling of being out of one's body, they
do not consistently produce this effect and essentially never produce any of the other trademarks of the
NDE, especially not in the ordered, chronological fashion typical of NDEs (Atwater,1994).
In sum, we cannot dismiss NDEs as simply hallucinations easily reproducible by drugs, and at this
point NDEs seem to have something to do with dying or the belief that one is about to die. Furthermore,
Ring's earlier work, Life At Death, goes on to explore other psychological and physiological explanations for
the NDE (such as lack of oxygen to the brain) and to convincingly destroy each argument or model. (Ring
,1980 pp.207-216) Finally, however, we find a far more direct approach to evaluating NDEs in the findings
of the great neurosurgeon William Penfield. Morse, author of Closer to the Light, relates the response of
Art Ward, former chairman of neurosurgery at the University of Washington, to Morse's mention of NDEs:
"Ward remembered one patient who experienced every trait of the near-death experience while Wilder
Penfield poked an area of his brain with an electric probe. As part of the patient's brain was stimulated, he
had the sensation of zooming up a tunnel, and so forth."(Morse, 1990, p.118)
This led Morse's team of researchers to more thoroughly examine Penfield's work, whereupon they turned
up
"reference to areas of the brain that, when electrically stimulated, produced out-of-body experiences. At
times patients on his operating table would say, 'I am leaving my body now,' when he touched this area with
an electric probe. Several reported saying, 'I'm half in and half out.'
The area he was 'mapping' was the Sylvian fissure, an area in the right temporal lobe located just
above the right ear. When he electrically stimulated the surrounding areas of the fissure, patients frequently
had the experience of 'seeing God,' hearing beautiful music, seeing dead friends and relatives, and even
having a panoramic life review."(Morse,1990 p.118)
When Morse published this finding, a Chilean team quickly contacted him to tell him that they too had found
the Sylvian fissure to be the site of NDEs, using an entirely different method of isolating the locations of the
effects of drugs on the brain.(Morse, 1990)
Have we then completely explained the near-death experience as a physiological mechanism in the
Sylvian fissure? Have our arguments as to whether drugs are the cause of the NDE all been in vain? Not at
all. First of all, while it is obvious from the above that drugs could not have been the cause of the NDE, we
have also established that drugs ( and all other supposed causes Ring chases down ) cannot be the triggers of
the events that take place at the Sylvian fissure during death.
We must also realize that just because the NDE can be forced to happen with a probe does not
mean parts of it are not absolutely real. Accounts of NDErs who describe resuscitation procedures in
perfect detail abound(Atwater,1994)(Ring,1984)(Morse,1990). In a survey conducted by Morse, "medically
savvy" patients were asked to describe the typical resuscitation procedure and were found to be far less
accurate than NDErs, who essentially scored perfectly(Morse,1990 p.120). In addition, NDErs were able to
describe specific events from their resuscitation that were unique to that revival
attempt(Atwater,1994)(Morse,1990)(Ring,1984). For instance, one NDEr reported being carried by her
father from the X-ray room to the emergency room, even though she was unconscious the whole
trip!(Morse,1990 p.122) An older woman who had an NDE told of jumping out of her body to follow a
nurse to the next room, where she saw the nurse break open a vial with her bare hands for expedience in
saving the old woman's life. Waking, she scolded the nurse, saying that she would surely cut her hands
doing that (Atwater,1994).
There are many more instances of this, including the case of a woman who apparently floated out a
window during her out of body experience, and spotted a shoe on a ledge not visible from any hospital
window(Morse,1990)(Atwater,1994). The shoe was confirmed to be there by a courageous doctor who
tottered out the window and around a corner to retrieve the shoe(Morse,1990)(Atwater,1994).
With a bit of stretching however, each of these cases could be explained away by the activity of the
subconscious mind. There are plenty of records on file of people subconsciously remembering whole songs
they had only glanced at while flipping through a book, or of being able to speak foreign languages after
hearing them spoken by tourists(Morse,1990). Compared to these feats, subconsciously picking up the
details of a resuscitation attempt, or synthesizing an out of body experience out of a precisely captured
spatial layout of a hospital room should be considered relatively easy. As for the shoe, one might say that
the woman must have spotted it while being wheeled into the hospital, or was just very lucky in her
prediction.
Then there are the out-of-body experiences which absolutely shatter the theory that the
subconscious is responsible for fabricating these experiences. People have reported events happening miles
away from the site of their NDE - most often at their own homes or at friend's homes - and these reports
have been corroborated down to the last detail(Morse,1990)(Atwater,1994)(Ring,1984). There are
thousands of reports of this kind, things that were known by NDErs that were well out of range of even the
powerful subconscious mind. Add to this that no NDEr who had elements of the common core experience
has ever been found to be wrong about their claims(Morse,1990)(Atwater,1994)(Ring,1984).
We have an undeniable conclusion: NDErs were capable of clairvoyance, or at least a clairvoyance
based on subconscious telepathic connection to close friends, during their NDEs. Science is out of everyday
explanations - people simply saw things they could not have seen even with super-heightened versions of the
five standard senses.
This does not immediately confirm the idea of disembodied senses. Just as the NDEr might have
witnessed resuscitation attempts from above by a subconscious spatial model of their surroundings, so
NDErs might be witnessing the surroundings of their close friends through a telepathic communication with
their friend's subconscious, and so telepathy might be the only ability required.
Also inexplicable are the people who meet dead relatives during their NDEs and often come back
with information they have never been told(Ring,1984)(Atwater,1994). It is even more of a stretch to
explain this as subconscious gleaning of secret information, and may again require us to admit the NDEr was
capable of telepathy or mind-reading during his experience. And again the information is consistently
correct (Atwater,1994)(Ring,1984).
So far, we have only grudgingly admitted that the human race may have the already guessed-at
ability of telepathy, and we seem to be able to explain the rest of the NDE away with the events at the
Sylvian fissure.
Can we safely do this? Again, not at all. We must ask: What is the Sylvian fissure doing there in
the first place? Can it be possible that such a complex mechanism evolved in us? What selective pressures
could have brought this about? And if we cannot come up with a feasible theory for how the NDE response
to death evolved, what does that imply?
Before we ask any of these questions, however, we can gain a great deal of insight by examining
the differences between the near death experience for various people of various backgrounds. These
differences can help us explore whether the NDE should be viewed as a transcendental experience and
whether we should look for a physiological explanation or a metaphysical one. First of all, part of Morse's
stated intention in writing a book about the NDEs of children was to show that the NDE is consistent even
when the subjects have not been exposed to common belief systems(Morse,1990). The first children's NDE
Morse was exposed to involved a girl named Katie whose NDE went well beyond her family's Mormon
beliefs(Morse,1990). Katie's full blown NDE involved both the tunnel phenomenon and encounters with
angels, neither of which can be explained by her exposure to her parents' beliefs(Morse,1990).
More convincing yet are the few tales of people having NDEs as babies that fit the core NDE in
every way. In one of these tales, nine month old "Mark" ( this is a pseudonym ) tells of an out of body
experience during which he drifted to the hospital lobby and spotted his grandparents grieving over his
"death", following by crawling up a tunnel to a field where Mark "ran through fields with God".(Morse,1990
p.41) These and other tales mean either that the near-death mechanism is fully developed in the brain even
as a baby, or can be viewed as simply consistent with a visit to "heaven".
What is not so easily explained is why a 45-year-old Midwestern schoolteacher had the following
variant on the NDE:
"I entered into a dark tunnel and suddenly I was in a place filled up
with love and a beautiful, bright light. The place seemed holy. My father,
who had died two years earlier, was there, as were my grandparents.
Everyone was happy to see me, but my father told me it was not my time and
I would be going back. Just as I turned to go, I caught sight of Elvis! He
was standing in this place of intense bright light. He just came over to
me, took my hand and said: Hi Bev, do you remember me?'." (Mauro,1992)
Why has this schoolteacher replaced the God of the core NDE with Elvis? While this is an extreme case of
replacing the God figure of the NDE with another entity - usually God is replaced by Buddha or a similar
figure (Morse,1990)(Atwater,1994)(Ring,1984) - it suggests what the replacement mechanism might be.
Before concluding anything we should look at the following differences in the way certain cultures perceive
the NDE:
"* Many of the Africans interpreted the event as somewhat evil; half
thought the experience signified that they were somehow "bewitched."
Another called it a "bad omen."
* Among 400 Japanese NDErs, many reported seeing long, dark rivers and
beautiful flowers, two common symbols that frequently appear as images in
Japanese art.
* East Indians sometimes see heaven as a giant bureaucracy, and
frequently report being sent back because of clerical errors!
* Americans and English say they are sent back for love or to perform
a job.
* Natives of Micronesia often see heaven as similar to a large,
brightly lit American city with loud, noisy cars and tall buildings."(Mauro,1992)
We see that, while certain aspect of the NDE are fairly consistent, like the tunnel and the presence of light,
other parts, particularly the perception of heaven, seem to be ad-libed!
We can interpret this in one of two ways again. Either the "program" being executed in the Sylvian
fissure has certain variables in it, i.e. instead of a consistent God image, one sees the figure one feels the
greatest awe toward ( in the schoolteacher's case, Elvis ), or, in the transcendental plane of existence being
journeyed to, the introduction to heaven is tailored to the arriving person to make the transition more
comfortable. Then there is the synthesis of the two ideas: that the program in the Sylvian fissure is placed
there as a transition to heaven, and the variance is intentional. NDErs who leave their experience with a
strong belief in God often voice this idea of a facilitated transition to heaven: "Suddenly I was aware God
was coming. I came to know that I had needed a human-looking Christ to relate to so I wouldn't be
scared."(Atwater,1994 p.59)
There are also differences between the NDEs of adults and children. Dr. Morse reports that adult
NDErs almost always experience a life review, whereas children never do(Morse,1990). Morse's opinion is
that children don't have enough of a lifetime to review(Morse,1990). This is consistent with both the
transcendental journey and the physiological explanation. Morse also notes that children always make a
conscious decision to return whereas adults only make a conscious decision about 20% of the time, and are
often forced to return to life(Morse,1990). This is also consistent with either view.
Variations in the reason for return to life, however, are not so easily interpreted in two ways. It is
unreasonable to assume that heaven would send Americans and English back for love or for a job, and
would accidentally send East Indians back based on clerical errors. Clearly here the ad-lib ability seen in the
NDE is inconsistent with the idea of journey to a transcendental plane. Similarly it could be argued that the
Africans should not be feeling bewitched after their return from "heaven", no matter how strong their
cultural bias to begin with. This strongly suggests that the NDE is not an experience
of transcendental plane of existence, of heaven.
So we return to trying to understand how the NDE ability might have evolved. First of all lets take
the ability to have an NDE as a trait governed by a single gene, and lets assume that the NDE trait started
exactly as we see it now: i.e. there was no time when there were genes for partial NDEs which had to be
further modified to get the gene for the full NDE. People have called the ability to have an NDE a kind of
psychological comfort on the way to dying(Mauro,1992). Obviously, evolution would not select for a trait
like this, since anyone reaping the benefits of the trait would be dying. Similarly, we cannot argue that the
NDE would help others who view the death of the NDEr since this would not select the individual either.
The only way the complete NDE trait could be selected for is if the individual had an NDE and was then
more likely to reproduce, but the odds of having an NDE counterbalance the possibly higher probability of
reproducing that the NDE might cause.
Similarly, viewing the NDE as something that evolved in stages, i.e. as a gene that allowed a person
to have some kind of experience upon dying that was slowly defined by evolution, we find the same failure
to find a selecting force.
Either the NDE didn't evolve or it evolved in parts, each of which increased the selectivity of the
individual with the partial trait that would eventually be synthesized into the full blown NDE trait. For
instance, Ring talks about an ability to disassociate that he has found to be common among NDErs:
For Psychologist Kenneth Ring, Ph.D., author of the Omega Project
(Morrow, 1992), research into NDEs began with a very down-to-earth
approach. He wanted to determine whether there are any distinguishing
features between people who remember and report paranormal encounters and
those who do not.
He quickly discovered an extraordinary similarity in the backgrounds
of those who had near-death experiences. There was, he says, "a consistent
tendency for them to report a greater incidence of childhood abuse and
trauma."
One common response to such trauma is dissociation - a psychological
phenomenon in which a person separates from a reality that is too painful
to process by conscious means, and retreats into a world of their own
invention.
In fact, Ring acknowledges that those with histories of child abuse
score higher on measures of dissociation, or even develop serious
dissociative disorders such as multiple personality. (He cites reports of
UFO abductions as possible examples of children dissociating, or "tuning
out" from the reality of being abducted by a stranger and forced into an
unfamiliar car.)
He suggests that NDErs are dissociating from the trauma of being near
death....
"The ability to dissociate makes you more receptive to alternate
realities," he explains. "You are dissociating in response to trauma, so
you are more likely to register an NDE as a conscious event." By
developing a dissociative response style as a psychological defense, you
are more able to tune into other realities as well - becoming what Ring
calls "an encounter-prone personality." (Mauro,1992)
Here Ring links the evolved psychological defense mechanism of disassociation with the ability to have an
NDE. The ability to disassociate could be responsible for the out-of-body experience and for the feelings of
detachment felt during the NDE.
Other parts of the NDE can possibly be explained as physiological events triggered by death that
have been weaved into the NDE. For instance, Philip Yom's article in Scientific American, titled
"Daisy,Daisy: do computers have near death experiences?" explains that neural computer networks -
networks designed to simulate the computing style of the human brain - manifest a behavior similar to the
life review described by NDErs(Yom,1993). Such networks, upon losing 90% of their connections, output
all previously learned information, essentially analogous to human memories(Yom,1993). Thus the life
review component of the NDE could simply be a trait of how the brain is wired together, and not require any
selective pressure to bring about.
The light seen by many NDErs could be explained by varying density of light receptors in the eye.
In the final stages of brain death, all neurons begin firing continuously and at full intensity. Since the eye has
a much greater density of receptors toward the center of vision, this full intensity firing might appear as an
intense brightness in the center of the field of vision, brighter than anything previously seen, yet not searing
the eye since no light is actually involved.
Neurotransmitters classed as endorphins, typically associated with happiness ( for instance runner's
high ), have been shown to maintain the same level of concentration in a dying animal's brain, and so are
unlikely to be responsible for the feelings of bliss experienced by NDErs(Morse,1990)(Atwater,1994).
However other neurotransmitters, particular seratonin, which is released putatively in times of stress, could
be responsible for the emotions felt by NDErs(Mauro,1992). The increasing feeling of bliss would be
consistent with later stages of brain death, and increasing seratonin levels caused by that increased stress.
This is not intended as a complete evolutionary and physiological model of the NDE, but is
presented to show that many components of the NDE could have evolved separately to be synthesized at the
Sylvian fissure and given a common trigger. Now that we have a scenario where that NDE did not have to
evolve as an experience intended solely for the dying, we have a realistic evolution of the NDE.
The problem is the time scale of this evolution. There were 8 million NDErs in the United States
alone according to a Gallup poll 4 years old as of 1994(Morse,1990). This is some fraction of a group of
people capable of NDEs. What kind of time would be required for this change to come about? Minimum
guesses come up with a figure of hundreds of thousands of years. By seeing this far we have perhaps solved
the chicken and egg problem of whether religion or NDEs came first, and which caused the other. Either the
NDE evolved a long time before the first records of religion, or it was part of the creation of man. In either
case, NDEs are almost definitely the source of the angelic and holy light imagery used in many modern
religions, if not the entire origin of such religions.
Before we consider what else this time requirement implies, however, we must jump back to
Atwater's dissenting theory about the typical near death experience. Atwater describes four types of near
death experience:
"The Four Types of Near- Death Experiences
Initial Experience (sometimes referred to as the "non-experience")
Involves elements such as a loving nothingness or the living dark or a friendly voice. Usually
experienced by those who seem to need the least amount of evidence for proof of survival, or who need the
least amount of shakeup in their lives at that point in time. Often, this becomes a "seed" experience or an
introduction to other ways of perceiving and recognizing reality.
Unpleasant and/or Hell-like Experience ( inner cleansing and self-confrontation)
Encounter with a threatening void or stark limbo or hellish purgatory, or scenes of startling and
unexpected indifference, even "hauntings" from one's own past. Usually experienced by those who seem to
have deeply suppressed or repressed guilts, fears, and angers and/or those who expect some kind of
punishment or discomfort after death.
Pleasant and/or Heaven-like experience (reassurance and self-validation)
Heaven-like scenarios of loving family reunions with those who have died previously, reassuring
religious figures or light beings, validation that life counts, affirmative and inspiring dialogue. Usually
experienced by those who most need to know how loved they are and how important life is and how every
effort has a purpose in the overall scheme of things.
Transcendent Experience ( expansive revelations, alternate realities)
Exposure to otherworldly dimensions and scenes beyond the individual's frame of reference;
sometimes includes revelations of greater truths. Seldom personal in content. Usually experienced by those
who are ready for a "mind stretching" challenge and/or individuals who are more apt to utilize ( to whatever
degree) the truths that are revealed to them."(Atwater,1994 p.19-20)
Her next four chapters provide examples of each type, which are far less clearly delineated than the four
casts she lays out. Every experience in the three "positive" NDE categories fits under the general definition
of the core NDE, and the true distinction between the categories seems to be how far along the NDEs got
before the subjects came back to their bodies. Thus "transcendent" experiences were simply full blown
NDEs, and "initial" experiences were simply short NDEs that never got beyond the out-of-body stage.
There seemed to be a far better correlation between the amount of time the subject was "dead" and the type
of NDE experienced than between any assessment of the subject's "needed" level of NDE. For instance all
of Atwater's examples of "initial" NDEs seem to correspond to five minutes or less passing in the "material"
world, whereas two of her examples of "transcendental" NDEs lasted twenty minutes and three days
respectively(Atwater,1994).
Atwater's fourth category of "negative" NDEs seems a valid distinction, however, despite the fact
the neither Ring nor Morse nor Moody report more than one in a hundred NDEs being negative, each
dismissing the negative NDEs as aberrations (Morse,1990)(Ring,1984). Atwater on the other hand claims
that about a seventh of the NDEs that have been described to her have been negative NDEs involving
various visions of hell(Atwater,1994). Atwater convincingly explains this difference in results by pointing
out that the IANDS NDE questionnaire did not leave room for a negative interpretation of the NDE, a
criticism later confirmed by the questionnaire designers and the president of IANDS(Atwater,1994). In the
negative NDEs Atwater found on her own, far fewer events are consistent from person to person, although
most negative NDEs involve a fall downward through a cyclone and end by changing to a typical positive
NDE: an encounter with a being of light(Atwater,1994). Atwater mentions one case involving four people
who had experienced the same vision of hell: "...she came to view a landscape of barren rolling hills, filled to
overflowing with nude, zombie-like people standing elbow to elbow and doing nothing but staring straight at
her"(Atwater,1994 p.36)
Atwater points out that, despite its horrific nature, the negative NDE seems to have a positive
effect on people, since the message is interpreted as "shape up"(Atwater,1994). This positive spin on life,
however, barely compares to the total transformation evidenced in most positive NDErs, and this is what
will lead us to a final theory on NDEs(Ring,1984)(Atwater,1994).
Both Ring and Atwater base their final theses on the personality changes evident in NDErs. Here is
a set of headings for paragraphs describing the various changes evident in NDErs:
"The inability to personalize love and a sense of belonging
The inability to recognize and comprehend boundaries, rules, limits
Difficulty in understanding time sense or references either to the future or the past
Sensitivities enhance and expand, the intuitive opens up to the psychic
A changed view of physical reality, with a noticeable reduction in worries and fears
A different feeling of physical self, knowing that we live in and "wear" our bodies
Difficulty with communications and relationships, finding it hard to say what is meant or to understand the
words of others." (Atwater,1994 p.121)
Ring has a less transcendental approach. The following are headings of graphs of survey results. Each
graph listed shows a strong tilt toward the "strongly increased" response, will almost no "decreased"
responses:
"Appreciation of ordinary things
Appreciation of nature
Helping others
Compassion for others
Patience for others
Tolerance for others
Love for others
Insight into others
Understanding of others
Acceptance of others
Higher consciousness
Understanding of what life is all about
Sense of purpose
Sense of inner meaning
Self-understanding
Personal meaning"(Ring,1984 pp.300-311)
Other tendencies noted were toward a universal spiritualism present in all religions, increased psychic
abilities, and regarding life as sacred(Atwater,1994)(Ring,1984).
Both Ring and Atwater noted a common set of physiological changes in NDE survivors as well.
Both point out less need of sleep, more efficient bodily functions, less tolerance to light, and increased
creativity among other changes (Ring,1984)(Atwater,1994). Both report sudden jumps in intelligence and
understanding of physics and mathematics theorems never before learned(Ring,1984)(Atwater,1994).
What is the significance of these unbelievable transformations? Both Ring and Atwater quickly
point out the kundalini phenomenon, an Eastern style spiritual awakening to higher degree of consciousness,
as absolutely similar to the NDE "awakening":
"In full kundalini awakenings, what is experienced is significantly similar to what many NDErs report from
their experiences. And more than that: The aftereffects of these deep kundalini awakenings seem to lead to
individual transformations and personal world views essentially indistinguishable from those found in
NDErs."(Ring, 1984 p.231)
Atwater spends an entire chapter comparing the eastern kundalini enlightenment to the NDE aftereffect and
resoundingly agrees with Ring's conclusion(Atwater,1994). Beyond here the theories begin to diverge.
While Ring seeks a purely evolutionary standpoint (Ring, 1984), Atwater's opening passage to her chapter
on the kundalini hypothesis tells you the viewpoint she will inevitably seek:
"[The Light is] a million suns of compressed love dissolving everything unto itself, annihilating thought and
cell, vaporizing humanness and history, into the one great brilliance of all that is and all that ever was and all
that will be.
You know it's God.
No one has to tell you.
You know.
You can no longer believe in God, for belief implies doubt. There is no more doubt. None.
...There is One, and you are of the One"(Atwater,1994 p.142)
Atwater's final thesis is of course humans evolving through higher and higher states of consciousness toward
merging with God(Atwater,1994). Ring on the other hand, having stated that "What occurs during an NDE
has nothing inherently to do with death or with the transition into death"(Ring, 1984 p.226), goes on to
synthesize the NDE, ND-like experiences triggered by other phenomena, and the kundalini phenomenon into
a gigantic evolutionary thesis(Ring,1984). Here the theories merge again in their explanation of how this
evolution can take place. It is not the normal, genetic evolution that is occurring here. Both researches
refer to Rupert Sheldrake's theory of formative causation (Ring,1984)(Atwater,1994). Sheldrake's theory
says that there are massless, energyless morphogenetic fields that determine the behavior of physical,
chemical and biological systems(Ring,1984). Ring uses this theory to explain how our race can evolve
without time for a significant gene pool shift, by defining and sharing morphogenetic fields for the evolution
of consciousness(Ring,1984). NDEs and kundalini enlightment are simply two different ways to reach or to
use the morphogenetic field that leads to this higher state of consciousness(Ring,1984). While Sheldrake's
theory may sound outrageous, and is not accepted by the scientific community at large, there are biological
phenomena entirely consistent with the theory that in fact seem to demand formative causation:
" In 1920, a Harvard psychologist named William McDougall trained a group of rats to swim
through a water maze. This these animals learned to do, though, as is the way with rats (and some other
creatures), some learned faster than other. And, as is the way of psychologists, McDougall kept track of the
number of errors each rat made until the task was mastered. McDougall continued this experiement by
breeding his maze-swimming rats over twenty generations and giving the descendants of the originals the
same experimental task. The findings showed that succesive generations of rats became progressively better
at learning to swim through the maze; indeed, the last generation learned to do so ten times as fast as the
original group. Since parental rats do not send their children to maze-swimming schools, McDougall's
findings are puzzling indeed.
But there is more to the story. Other researchers, in Scotland and Australia, attempted to repeat
McDougall's work. Astonishingly, in both studies, the first generation of rats learned to negotiate the maze
almost as fast as McDougall's last generation. Some of the rats even learned the task immediately and
without a single error!
...According to [Sheldrake], McDougall's first generation of rats established a morphogenetic field
for that behavior. That field then 'guided' the behavior of later rats through a process called morphic
resonance so that the task could be learned more quickly."(Ring,1984 p.261-262)
Implication being that humans who have experienced NDEs or kundalini enlightenment have set up the
morphogenetic field for gaining higher consciousness, so that it will become easier and easier to become
enlightened until the entire world will slip easily into this next level of consciousness(Ring,1984).
Ring sees the final goal of reaching higher and higher stages of consciousness as "The Omega
Point", brainchild of Pere Teilhard, the point at which human consciousness merges to form "a unified
planetary mind aware of its own essential divinity"(Ring,1984 p.252). As Ring has phrased it, the divinity
concept seems to be Teilhard's alone, but if Ring concurs then it would seem that Atwater and Ring have
formed the same conclusion about the destiny of the race. In fact Atwater's phrase "There is One, and you
are of the One." may imply an even deeper agreement. Finally, perhaps the most important corroborating
evidence of this theory is that Ring and Atwater developed these theories independently, connections to
kundalini enlightenment and all(Atwater,1994).
This is not, however, the first theory of racewide ascension in consciousness. Julian Jaynes, in his
book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, puts forward the theory that
man evolved the consciousness we are familiar with today from an earlier bicameral state in which men
believed all thoughts, motivations and desires came from the Gods(Jaynes,1976). Jaynes describes a sort of
hallucinatory existence in which the right hemisphere of the brain generated impulses that the left received as
motivation from the Gods(Jaynes,1976). Jaynes estimates the shift to the consciousness of today to have
been in mid-stride about the time of Homer's transcription of the Iliad(Jaynes,1976).
Amidst all these theories so unconfirmable it is nearly laughable, what can be thought of as
sufficiently proven? It would seem that the recognition of the effects of the NDE as universal to many
concepts of enlightenment would imply that there is some kind of enlightenment or at least a change. This
enlightenment seems to be part of some kind of evolution, but whether this evolution tends toward the
Omega point, toward God, or toward some darker fate like planetary destruction is unclear. In any case we
must remember that something about the out-of-body experience is absolutely real, and this means that
discarding things like clairvoyance or ESP right and left as "mumbo jumbo" is probably the wrong thing to
do. Finally we must remember Darwin's advice on how not to misinterpret his theory of evolution: that
evolution does not tend toward perfection, but towards what survives best. The feelings of love manifested
by the "enlightened" may simply be the kind of attitude that will create a more stable society; the feeling that
life has a purpose may simply fill in the gap caused by the probing intellect that looks for meaning and finds
none, thereby creating instability. Happiness must not be confused with truth, no matter how intuitively we
feel we understand things. As Einstein would point out, our intuition, our "common sense", has been wrong
before.
References
Atwater, P.M.H. (1994). Beyond the Light: What Isn't Being Said About Near-Death Experience. New
York, NY: Birch Lane Press.
Morse, Dr. Melvin (1990). Closer to the Light: Learning From the Near-Death Experiences of Children.
New York, NY: Ivy Books.
Ring, Kenneth (1984). Heading Toward Omega: In Search of the Meaning of the Near Death Experience.
New York, NY: William Morrow and Company.
Ring Kenneth (1980). Life At Death New York, NY: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan.
Mauro, James (1992, July-August). Bright Lights, Big Mystery. Psychology Today, pp.54-60
Yom, Philip (1993, May). "Daisy, Daisy": Do Computers have Near-Death Experiences? Scientific
American, pp.32-34
Jaynes, Julian (1976). The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Boston, MA:
Houghton Mifflin Company.
Life After Life. Video, based on the book by Raymond Moody, MD.
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